Customer Reviews

Surfacing

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Average of Three STARS? That is an indication that some reviewers don't 'get' this book.

This book, one of Atwood's earlier works, was written with a great deal of metaphor symbolism etched so skillfully into the content of the book, you may not realize that until you've reached the end, and have an "aha" experience, in some ways similar (though without the visual shock effect) to the way I felt at the end of watching Sixth Sense (the movie).

If you like Margaret Atwood, you will greatly enjoy seeing her young mind at work, as she shows us the unraveling mind of a young woman looking for something in the Canadian woods one week-end.

This book is effective and touching if you can move with it - but it isn't a linear-read. The missing plot and underdeveloped characters are not missing or underdeveloped at all -- read without that analytical side of the brain, and the treasures will 'surface'. Undo expectations and flow emotionally with it -- you won't be disappointed.

(my original paperback version has $1.50 marked on it!). The original version is falling apart, and I wanted to own another - glad to see it is still here (oh, my but look at the price now!)

I have a feeling that those who rated this book with three or less stars have no idea what the book is about. If you're searching for a bit of fluff, this is not the book to turn to. Although it isn't a difficult read, it also is not a shallow one. In fact, Margaret Atwood's searing and relentless eye for detail is in its earliest stages here. Any fan will appreciate _Surfacing_.

In _Surfacing_, Margaret Atwood addresses the issue of identity as reflected by the artifice around you - both in the people you know and the person you are instructed to become. Nothing in this book is what it seems, but rather, it is a clever facade meant to impart meaning to the reader.

The nameless narrator of _Surfacing_ engages in a deep journey into the wild bush of Northern Quebec, which becomes a metaphor for her process of recovering self and identity. The land is used as a backdrop for the renunciation of a distorted self-image. What this book ultimately does is provides us with insight into how we also function as individuals and just what is it that makes us who we are? Is each human being just a pastiche?

Atwood gives you four fascinating characters that are peeled apart to the core and, even though it is only the main protagonist that goes through a physical journey in finding herself, we also witness the psychic journeys of those around her and realize what it means to be a man, woman, artist, a mother, father, wife, husband, and sister. No role is left untouched.

_Surfacing_ is also a very entertaining book and can be read on many levels. Highly recommended!

On the exterior many lives are impetuously lived, in constant motion, constant flux, demanding change... while on the inside, important wheels have long since stopped turning. Crucial questions languish, not so much from being already answered as from never having been asked. Another type of person floats along fairly steady, and constant diversion is not really an issue... but on the inside, they are a whirligig. Always asking and re-asking, backpedalling, and here in the unseen realm the action is taking place, like a duck's feet underwater.
The nameless protagonist in Atwood's Surfacing is of this latter variety, contemplative and introspective. Together with three friends of the former type of personality (a married couple and her boyfriend Joe), these four drive off into the remote Quebec wilderness for a few days of R & R. This whirligig character however, has a far greater purpose in mind. She is returning here to her childhood home in search of her father who has mysteriously vanished without a trace. While these other three suntan, fish, and bicker, she is on a quest that calls forth a recollection of her entire upbringing and childhood. We sense that if she finds her father at all, it will be in a way that is as surprising to the reader as it will be to herself.
She's a great character. If it wasn't for her the others would seemingly starve to death, seated at the table and surrounded by victuals but unaware of how to prepare lunch. She's the organizer, the fish-filleter, the decision-maker... hourly explaining to her friends what will happen next. She is the individual who surfaces, thinks for herself, and finds an identity within. In stark contrast are her friends who seem to only find sustenance in the pieces they can bite off of each other and ingest.
As in so much of Atwood's work, these men are soon to reveal their inherent nasty dogness. On two occasions Whirligig avoids being (essentially) raped by each of them only by reminding them that it is "the right time" for her to get pregnant. But she is not a heroine without her own foibles. She realizes her own problems, the greatest of which may be her her inability to return the "love" that has been offered her throughout her life. Her detached coldness. But the importance in becoming whole (self-actualized?) may lie right there in this word "realizing", which, in the case of this novel MAY be synonymous with the word "surfacing". Throughout the book a central question seems to repeat itself... what does it mean to love? What if I don't "feel" love when someone says "I love you"? What does it mean to love one's past, one's history? To love your parents, your self... to love your lovers. And what does it mean to withdraw, to UTTERLY withdraw? These are the kind of meaty questions that surface in this book, brilliantly written and permeated with dark symbolism and a misty/ethereal 70's New-Ageyness to it. In Atwoodland, anything and everything can be a talisman.
"It's true, I am by myself; this is what I wanted, to stay here alone. From any rational point of view I am absurd; but there are are no longer any rational points of view." Is Whirligig sane or insane on the last page? Surfacing or submerged? The author leaves the verdict in the hands of the reader. I enjoyed reading it, and haven't yet set the gavel down.

I am an avid Margaret Atwood fan, and thus felt compelled to finish reading this book in the hope that it would somehow be as emotionally provocative as are many of her other works. Yet I felt incredibly disappointed in this earlier work of hers. Although her writing is interesting and the symbolism is vivid, it feels like Margaret Atwood is still searching for her literary voice and style. This novel seems to represent her search for her writing style, as it flips between using poetic symbolism and diary-style narratives. Quite disappointing- and I recommend to anyone reading this as their first Atwood attempt, to read another of her much greater works (i.e. Bodily Harm, Alias Grace, Robber Bride, Wilderness Tips) to truly experience the power of her writing.

For me the essence of this novel is the journey undertaken by a young woman as she returns to her inner self. Coming home to the island wilderness of her youth in Quebec in search of her missing father, the young artist is accompanied by her lover and a vacuous married couple. All are her recent acquaintances in a life where she has buried many painful experiences subconsiously. Her true self begins to emerge as the remembered becomes familiar and compelling. She finds herself on a solitary journey and the people with her are an impediment to her awakening. She disappears from sight when they leave the island, confidant that she carries a pure new life from her companion-lover, Joe. Now, she is finished with him. Layer by layer, she begins to cleanse her psyche, finally uncovering the woman essential to the nurturing of her unborn child. There are multi-levels of awareness in this novel: progress, pollution, man's encroachment upon nature. Margaret Atwood offers much food for thought. But this book may not be for everyone. It doesn't seem at first as sophisticated as Atwood's later works. Personally, I find myself returning again and again to SURFACING, as if each time I am able to wear the skin of the young woman's discovery, surfacing myself.

This is another one of Atwood's early novels, but is almost the flipside of The Edible Woman. That book showcased her oft neglected sense of humor and used some none too subtle metaphors to drive the point home. Here we have a very somber work that has so many layers of symbolism that English teachers the world over must be drooling over the thought of putting it into their classrooms. In a nutshell, a nameless protagonist takes three friends (a married couple and her boyfriend) out into the Canadian woods to find out where her father and along the way we get heaps of character exploration, to which plot almost seems secondary. Not that this is a bad thing, at her best Atwood dissects people like nobody's business and her character studies reveal simple characters for the complicated people they are layer by layer. Except that doesn't much happen here. Like the later Life Before Man, there are four people here who interact in various ways. Also like Life Before Man, all of these people are either so self absorbed or just plain unlikeable that it's hard to care. Unlike Life Before Man, the book is narrated totally in first person, which means you don't get as much of that car accident feeling from watching all the characters circle each other, which wound up being the most fascinating part of that book. Here it's all filtered through the narrator, which is good and bad. We don't get really great insights into the other characters this way, the one guy is always annoying and a total jerk, he reminds me of On the Road's Dean Moriarty with all the redeeming qualities taken out. The other guy isn't as annoying but then he rarely talks either, so I guess it's a tossup. That leaves the heavy character lifting to the two women, one of which is rather submissive and not too exciting. The other is the narrator herself, who speaks in Atwood's typically brilliant prose, with all its gift for detail and metaphor. The only problem . . . she's not too interesting either since she's cold and distant to everyone in the story and nearly impenetrable to the reader. Atwood, to her credit, does try to find a new spin on "woman repressed by society trying to break free" which leads to a very, very strange section of the book that probably means all kinds of things I'm not smart enough to understand. But in the end, the narrator was so distant that I really couldn't care all that much. Still, Atwood gets points for trying really hard, and I could read her prose all day, she does make beautiful sentences seem quite effortless. My version has a neater cover, with someone in a canoe dissolving, which I think sums up the book very well. All in all, a worthy read and worth your time, but it's not her best. That, alas, was still to come.

Margaret Atwood's "Surfacing" is a story about a woman connecting with her childhood, written in the context of her search for her missing father in the wilds of rural Quebec. The narrator, whose name is never revealed, is a commercial artist who lives in the city with her boyfriend Joe and is presently working on illustrations for a children's book. She has been summoned to her native village by a family friend who has reported to her that her father is missing, and, having no car of her own, she has persuaded Joe and her friends David and Anna, a married couple, to give her a ride and make a short summer vacation out of it.

Her childhood home, where her widowed father still lives, is a cabin on a wooded island in a lake near the village. The cabin is indeed empty, and the most significant clue she finds about her father's disappearance is a set of strange, indecipherable drawings on paper, apparently sketched by him recently. Did he go mad from self-isolation, or are these drawings a message of something more sinister? The narrator's quest seems to be motivated more by casual curiosity about what could have happened to him than by filial devotion or fear for his safety; she gives the impression of a woman whose capacity for love has been exhausted.

As might be expected, the four people on the island become entangled in a web of sexual tension. The narrator, herself divorced and the mother of a child whose fate is never made clear, contemplates her relationship with Joe, a struggling artist like her, who is almost morbidly quiet and becomes sullen when she refuses his request for marriage. Meanwhile, David and Anna's marriage is on a collision course. David, a capitalism-hating hippie who reflects the counterculture of the era in which the novel was written, is an obnoxious, slimy fellow who tries (unsuccessfully) to be funny by imitating cartoon characters yet continually intimidates Anna and makes a pass at the narrator in retribution for Anna's infidelity. Obviously, this is not a man with whom one would want to spend a week at a cabin.

Although "Surfacing" has the setup of a mystery novel, I feel obligated to say that anybody who reads it hoping for a conventional mystery will be disappointed. The novel uses a psychologically incisive modernist prose style and the spectral image of the narrator's missing father, whose spirit haunts the beautiful scenery like an invisible entity, silent but somehow watching, to achieve an effect that is ultimately cerebral and ominous. In the narrator's rather abrupt and almost maniacal transformation into a recluse, I was, oddly enough, reminded of Kafka's story "The Burrow," which invokes a similar aura of paranoia; here the narrator is making a final effort to protect herself, now that she no longer can rely on her father's protection, from the harmful effects of the world.

"Surfacing" is quite demanding on the reader.
The protagonist is numb, delusional at times, and extremely vague. As I slogged through the abstract metaphors, deliberately bad grammar, and fragmentary sentences, I became an excavator, trying to make sense of the tangents and stream of conciousness. We mustn't forget that this disarray is deliberate, it is supposed to mirror the protagonists headspace and confusion. It succeeds, but it makes the novel read like intangible random thoughts, rather than fluent prose.
The wilderness references here are meticulously informed, effectively descriptive, and the atmosphere created is genuinely eerie. It's a fair book if we can separate it from the rest of Atwood's admirable catalogue.
The problem is, the very thing we love about Atwood isn't here: her incisive wit is lost among the haze of the protagonist's perception. While this is a slim looking book, it's hardly an easy read, so be prepared to invest hour upon hour of attention and scrutiny to this work. "Surfacing" is thought provoking, slow-paced, a hum that will resonate. Overall, it does reward.
As this was only Atwood's second installment, it presents her talent in its formative stage. I'd recommended "Surfacing" only to those who are curious and have read her more pertinent works like "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Alias Grace".

With skill comparable to Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood has written a novel that takes a weekend in the life of a woman and turns it into a meditation on life that both sexes should experience. Imagery and characterization have never been stronger than in these pages.

SURFACING by Margaret Atwood
2/22/04

SURFACING by Margaret Atwood is a short novel that starts out as a story of a young woman who is in search of her missing father. Taking place in a wilderness area on an island in Quebec, the main character brings with her 3 friends (a boyfriend and another couple) and the four of them live on her family's old property, now rundown and in need of a lot of love and care. While the four spend their time "roughing it", she goes about plotting on how to figure out where her father is, or whether he is still alive.

This was a very difficult book for me to read. I'm going to say this straight out, that SURFACING by Margaret Atwood was a disappointment for me. Although I'm not going to give it a rating lower than 3 stars, coming from an author that I consider my favorite, it was difficult to read such a book that I found was not her best work. Some may disagree with me, but I found this book somewhat lacking, and that because this was one of her earlier novels, I felt that Atwood was still figuring out her style of writing. The attention to detail to the Canadian wilderness was wonderful, however, and I could imagine myself there with these four adults, scrounging for food and fishing for dinner.

I'm having a hard time describing how I feel about this book, as I had so much hoped for something better from Atwood. I don't think any fan should dismiss this book. It is a must read, if one would like an overview of Atwood's entire literary collection. However, I would recommend that any new reader not read this book first, as it might disappoint and prevent one in picking up another Atwood book. I still find that THE BLIND ASSASSIN is by far her best novel so far, followed closely by THE HANDMAID'S TALE.